ExchangeWire’s Charlotte Mceleny chats to Omnicom Media Singapore’s chief executive officer Chloe Neo and chief media officer, Daniel Henriksen about their new growth model and the agency landscape…

Chloe Neo, CEO, Omnicom Media Singapore and Daniel Henriksen, chief media officer, Omnicom Media Singapore, spoke to ExchangeWire about what their newly-launched 'OM Growth Model' means for the digital media ecosystem. 

Talk me through the new OM Growth Model and how that translates to digital media?

Chloe: The way brands grow has fundamentally changed. Today, influence isn’t driven by how loud you are, but by how available you are, across three dimensions: physical, mental, and emotional.

Physical availability means frictionless access everywhere people shop. Commerce is embedded across various platforms, including retail media, social commerce, creator platforms, livestreams, and, increasingly, AI-powered environments. Media investment must prioritise presence at the point of intent, ensuring brands are easy to buy the moment interest is sparked.

Mental availability is about being remembered and recognised across fragmented discovery points. This is harder than ever, given that 52% of adults use ad blockers, and 63% say their attention span is average or not great, according to Omnicom Media’s global study "The Future of Brand Influence". Brands must optimise for discoverability and recall across ecosystems, including social search, retail search, and generative engines, not just traditional search or paid media.

Emotional availability is the real differentiator because it reflects consumers' willingness to pay attention, trust, and engage. Omnicom Media’s research showed that 71% of consumers place more weight on what people say about a brand than on the brand’s own advertising. Emotional availability is created when brands feel authentic, relatable, and culturally present. Digital channels must do more than deliver impressions and access; they must earn attention and trust. Formats that invite participation, deliver shared experiences, and feel human outperform purely transactional executions.

I’ll further illustrate this with an example. When my 14-year-old daughter wanted a new pair of sneakers, she didn’t just purchase them after seeing an ad. Instead, she watched a creator style the sneakers, read reviews, asked her friends, and checked the recommendations from an AI shopping assistant. She was creating her own journey and building trust and excitement across multiple sources rather than choosing based on a single moment.

The Omnicom Media Growth Model highlights this, understanding that influence is no longer driven by advertising alone but by how brands show up across platforms, communities, and algorithms.

What’s driven the need for a new model in terms of consumer behaviour changes?

Daniel: Consumers are more empowered than ever. They actively navigate platforms, communities, creators, and algorithms to find solutions and make decisions. GenAI has accelerated this, with 70% of consumers saying it helps them become experts in any category.

Critically, AI systems can now recommend brands without consumers ever seeing a logo or an ad, effectively cutting brands out of decision-making moments.

At the same time, barriers to entry are lower, choice is overwhelming, and trust is fragile. 72% of people believe brands care more about their money than their loyalty. In that environment, influence is no longer owned; it is earned. This reality necessitated a new growth framework grounded in how people behave today.

You had some of Singapore’s key media businesses on stage. What do publishers and media businesses need to be doing for brands in this new growth era?

Daniel: Publishers and media businesses need to evolve their roles in these ways:

Become builders of trust and context: Publishers are no longer just purveyors of reach. They need to be perceived and valued as builders of trust and context, collaborating with brands to co-create influence, fostering deeper engagement and impact.

Prioritise relationship building: Media businesses need to think beyond traditional reach metrics and instead focus on cultivating strong relationships, creating environments where consumer attention is higher and trust can be transferred to brands.

Reduce friction and integrate access: To accelerate growth across physical, mental, and emotional availability, media businesses should develop solutions that reduce friction in the consumer journey and integrate access points for brands.

A lot of change is happening. What’s the one piece of advice brands should take away from this launch?

Chloe: Don’t optimise one type of availability at the expense of the others. Brands that chase short-term performance without building an emotional connection will struggle to sustain equity and growth over time. 

The brands that will thrive are those that are easy to buy (physical availability), easy to remember (mental availability) and genuinely worth caring about (emotional availability).

The brands that will win aren’t choosing between brand and demand, or AI and creativity. They consistently build and lead all three forms of availability wherever influence happens next. Leave one out, and a brand will be easily overlooked over time.

What’s next for Omnicom Media?

Chloe: Our next step is to turn the OM Growth Model into action, helping brands move forward and grow with intent. This involves continuous investment in tools, partnerships, and talent, along with strategic thinking and stronger AI capabilities, all while adopting a balanced approach that respects current consumer behaviour.

This operationalisation is driven by three core enablers:

Omni - Omnicom’s advanced intelligence platform: It connects strategy, execution, and performance, providing brands with a single view of how physical, mental, and emotional availability are built across platforms and AI-enabled environments.

CREO - our global content and creator engine: It helps brands develop culturally fluent, platform-native, and creator-led ideas that earn attention and trust in today's fragmented content landscape.

Our agency brands - We’ve retained all our agency brands at Omnicom Media because we believe in their positioning and the unique value they bring to our clients. OMD, PHD, UM and Initiative all have distinct cultures, strategic lenses and client propositions. Our employees are equipped to consult brands on these emerging areas of brand influence and reaching consumers when they are "available" with a suitable and optimal media strategy.

These enablers allow us to implement the OM Growth Model end-to-end, balancing machines and human connection, using data with empathy, and creating context, with trust to help brands keep up with change and grow through it.